The IRC and how it affected modern real-time chat applications

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The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol

The interface of an IRC application (Image source)

Back in the 80's there wasn't many ways to communicate with others, except through different mail services. The Internet there was staler and more static. 

However, even then, there was attempts to create fast and easy real-time chat applications. One of those attempts were the Internet Relay Chat protocol or shortly IRC. This protocol revolutionizes and change the way to communicate through a computer. It let people connect to the IRC servers to send and receive some messages, like we do today through the messengers. However, it wasn't as fast and as good as it is today.


The rise of popularity

When the first version of IRC protocol was created it had very low functionality. But that was enough, to create attention around that new, to this time, technology. The users, praise this protocol and soon enough the first third party IRC servers begin to emerge. As anything popular and stable, the IRC soon became a RFC standard under a number 1459.

Even though, the first IRC protocols looks raw, it was greatly improved over time. However, there is still some limitations on this protocol, that let this convenient technology to it's downfall by years 2003-2012.


New life and modern days

Although, the loss in popularity didn't signalize the loss of interest in this technology, instead the hard limits of this protocols did. To bypass them, there were created new chat protocols, that had more powerful functionality than a regular IRC could give. But, because of its popularity the newer protocols inherit some of the functionality and structure from its ancestor. 

For example, modern messengers and other real-time chats still uses channels as their main source of grouping and linking messages. Also, the modern chat protocols are still using slash ( / ) symbol to indicate a command.

There also some functionality that the IRC protocol lacked, but been added by other protocols. 

Such as, sending pictures and other binary data through message, like in Telegram. Or the ability of integrating the chat protocol with voice and video protocols to create conferences, which Microsoft Teams or Zoom did. Or the ability of grouping channels in guilds or communities, in such way as Discord, Slack and others did. And so on.

Discord interface (Image source)

By today, the technologies based on IRC protocol is widely used. However, the IRC aspect of it usually either greatly altered or used just as a chat addon to other services, such as the Twitch.


Conclusion

At the end, it is clearly seen the influence of this old technology. It would be hard to imagine the Internet if this technology never existed. Perhaps, there could be a different way, less intuitive, to communicate there.


References

    IRC

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